


Needle Hands

by crazyparakiss



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Angst, Gen, Movie and Book fusion, Violence, slight gore
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-01-09
Updated: 2015-01-09
Packaged: 2018-03-06 21:05:56
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,677
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3148523
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/crazyparakiss/pseuds/crazyparakiss
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>When does the dream end and the nightmare begin?</p>
            </blockquote>





	Needle Hands

**Author's Note:**

> Don't steal my art without asking, please.

**Title:** Needle Hands  
 **Author/Artist:** [](http://crazyparakiss.livejournal.com/profile)[**crazyparakiss**](http://crazyparakiss.livejournal.com/)  
 **prompt:** 19 – _Coraline_  
 **gift for:** [](http://the-bitter-word.livejournal.com/profile)[**the_bitter_word**](http://the-bitter-word.livejournal.com/)  
 **Beta:** [](http://themaohour.livejournal.com/profile)[**themaohour**](http://themaohour.livejournal.com/) and [](http://killuasama.livejournal.com/profile)[**killuasama**](http://killuasama.livejournal.com/)  
 **Pairing:** Implied Draco/Luna, Harry.  
 **Word Count:** 1.590  
 **Rating:** R (to be safe as there is blood and adult-ish humour)  
 **Summary:** When does the dream end and the nightmare begin?  
 **Disclaimer:** None of these characters are mine. I don’t hold any rights over Harry Potter or Coraline.  
 **Warning(s):** Blood, Mild Language, AU  
 **A/N:** Mountains of gratitude to my beta's [](http://themaohour.livejournal.com/profile)[**themaohour**](http://themaohour.livejournal.com/) and [](http://killuasama.livejournal.com/profile)[**killuasama**](http://killuasama.livejournal.com/)!

 

  
**Needle Hands**

A raven wing, spotted with stars and streaked with neon violets, greens, blues, and pinks; that was what the sky was when his eyes opened. Blood pounded in hot ears as his heartbeat grew louder. “Harry,” he heard shouted, though the sound was muted as if he had cotton stuffed into the canals of his ears.

“Harry.” It came again, louder this time, and he recognised the voice.

“Luna!” he tried to shout back, but his tongue was heavy in his dry mouth. Instead, a garbled noise escaped his throat. He turned toward her voice when she shouted again, and with bleary eyes, he focused on a garishly pink house in the distance. It was a perfect replica of the home he had in Godric’s Hollow; only instead of cherry red, it was a vulgar pink. A sign swung, the black chains squeaked. Painted on its surface were black words. Words that dripped like blood: The Pink Palace.

He shivered; a combination of the cold and fear. Harry stood on jelly legs, stumbled a few paces, and leaned against a gnarled tree that swayed in the breeze. His breath came in short pants as he tried to remember how he came to be here. This place was sinister, a mockery of the town he lived in with his parents.

A cackle formed in his memory: a cold white hand, sharp as needles; chilling red eyes. Black cloth rippled, a pale figure was on him — before he could shout, a warm hand covered his mouth.

“Potter,” hissed the familiar voice.

His heart hammered against his sternum, but the long fingers didn’t move from his mouth until his breathing calmed. “Damn Draco,” he whispered angrily. “You nearly gave me a heart attack.”

“I couldn’t shout for you,” he hissed. “That thing might still be about.”

Harry still held a fuzzy image about that _thing_. He gripped his head and found a fresh stream of blood making his forehead wet. “Wha — ”

“It’s that thing’s idea of a joke,” Draco whispered as he pulled Harry behind the black bark of the twisted tree. “I don’t have a clue what it’s doing to Loony.” He pulled a pristine kerchief from the inner pocket of his cloak and shoved the expensive fabric into Harry’s hand. “Put this on the cut, it’ll help.”

“What did it do to me?” Harry asked, and Draco huffed when Harry didn’t put the kerchief to his forehead as told. His cut burned when long fingers pushed the white square over the bleeding mark.

“You’re freaking hopeless,” Draco mumbled, ignoring Harry’s question. Harry opened his mouth to pick a fight, but the yowl of a feral cat made him pause. Draco’s grey eyes went wide with fear, and his mouth parted while his face paled in horror.

“Run,” he hissed, “Now!”

His fingers gripped Harry’s forearm with a strength Harry hadn't known he possessed. Draco yanked hard on Harry’s arm as he dragged him along the narrow, twisted path that led to a tiered maze. “In here.” Draco pulled him through a crumbling, rotted door on the third tier down. Behind them, Harry could still hear the wail of the cat.

“What was that?” he asked when they were in a narrow, dark passageway. It smelled of earth and rain.

“It was a warning from McGonagall,” Draco’s voice was loud despite his whisper, and Harry wondered how close the walls were to their bodies. When he reached out his arms he couldn’t feel them, but when he stood his head bumped the uneven ceiling.

“Where does this passage lead?” Harry asked when the silence grew endless and his legs felt as if they’d been walking for hours.

“Back to the Pink Palace,” Draco said, voice tight, “I’ve got to get Luna.”

Harry knew why, he didn’t have to ask; it’d always been written in the edges of Draco’s face: he loved his cousin, the one his father had promised him to, and as much as he denied it, Luna held his world. She was the reason they’d never become friends. Draco had a suspicious eye that lingered over the simple gestures Harry directed at Luna. The way he pushed her hair out of her eyes and the way they smiled together as she showed him pictures from her recent travels with her father. Draco didn’t have that ease, so he’d always been a jealous git. Harry shouldn’t have relished teasing him by over-emphasising his attentions toward his childhood friend. Luna was like a sister, as were Hermione and Ginny. Harry’s eye liked to stray toward older girls. Girls who knew how to give him a good time and didn’t require a guiding hand.

Harry’s cheek bumped against the hard, angular line of Draco’s shoulder when Draco stopped. Beneath his breath, he hissed out a swearword and Draco elbowed him in the ribs. “Shut it, Potter,” he whispered as loudly as he dared.

A door creaked, and the sound was faint. Harry raised an eyebrow at Draco, who was being terribly jumpy, as they stepped into the faint pink light of a long narrow hall. It resembled Harry’s foyer, save for the many winding serpents that made up the furniture and walls. Draco’s feet fell softly on the carpeted floors. His thin hand reached back and snatched Harry by the arm when he stood, shell-shocked, rooted with his eyes on the walls. “Come on, Potter,” Draco whispered vehemently, “I will need some courage so you can’t stop here.”

They stumbled over large wrinkles in the rug, and Draco nearly fell into the snapping snake head near the open door. At home, it might have been the family room, but here, in this hellish place, the space resembled a torture room.

“This looks like the dungeons at the manor.” Draco’s breath grazed Harry’s hair as he spoke over the top of Harry’s head.

“Call him here,” white, needle-like fingers lifted Luna’s cut face, “and I’ll leave your boyfriend unharmed.” Its voice was similar to the sounds the snakes made in the hall, though inexplicably more frightening. “Ah,” it spoke, and Harry assumed it was a male for the skeletal frame was tall and the face was bald of hair; the creature held no whisper of femininity. “He’s here, I can _feel_ him.”

Quick as a spell, it was before them, red button eyes narrowed down at where they crouched near the door. “Well, well he brought another spare with him.”

“Run, Draco,” Luna yelled, her voice hoarse.

Draco didn’t hear, his hand gripped at Harry’s arm as he stared wide-eyed and horrified up at the gleaming white being before him.

Its hand took hold of the terrified and motionless Draco, spindly fingers sharp as they cut through the black sleeve of his robes. Blood ribboned out from thin slices, and Draco screamed. The chuckle that came froze the blood in Harry’s veins, and he watch with morbid fascination as the jagged fingers deftly plucked out Draco’s eyes. This time, there was no sound as Draco’s mouth fell open. “So sharp, he didn’t feel a thing,” it chuckled. Grey buttons were pulled from thin air and pressed against Draco’s empty eye sockets, similarly coloured thread wove through the creature’s fingers, and Draco’s body trembled when Harry heard the needles pop through his flesh.

“Draco,” Luna sobbed; over and over his name fell from her lips. Carelessly, the sharp hands dropped Draco near Harry when, at last, their job was complete. Draco’s pale hands covered his eyes. Harry crawled closer to try and see beneath his palms, but Draco shouted when Harry touched the back of his hands.

“Don’t, don’t look,” he yelled. Red streams dripped over the sides of his hands, and trickled off the backs of his palms. Harry felt his chest rise and fall quickly as fearful sobs wracked his body. He had to see! He just had to…

With trembling fingers, he pulled away the cover of Draco’s hands. Harry smelled the fresh metallic scent of blood, but what he saw was worse.

–

Harry shot up; sweat and tears stained his face. Awake. Had he been asleep?

“Harry,” Mum called up the stairs, “Draco and Luna are here, are you dressed yet?”

“Down in a minute,” he yelled back with a strained voice.

–

“Finally, Potter makes his presence known,” Draco drawled, as he was wont to do when being a prissy brat. Harry flipped a finger at him and Draco rolled his eyes. “Cute, Potter.”  
Luna was halfway down the drive before they started after her. Draco shoved a parcel into Harry’s rucksack, with a scowl Harry followed him toward where Luna waited for the Knight Bus.

–

He didn’t dig the _Prophet_ -wrapped parcel out of his bag until he was lying in bed, later that night. The newsprint crinkled as Harry peeled it away. With wide eyes, he looked upon a ragdoll rendition of himself. The note attached warned him that Luna might be messing with voodoo, and advised him to watch his bollocks; least they fall off due to a venereal disease.

“Cute Malfoy,” he said sarcastically to the note. He allowed the parchment to flutter to the soft surface of his comforter. His green gaze captured by the still, eerie face of ragdoll Harry. “I have a feeling we’ve met before.”

“Harry,” his dad called up the stairs, “Time for dinner.”

Without further worry over the doll, Harry tossed it against his pillow and hurried down to the dining room.

In the soft glow of candlelight, the green button eyes glowed red.

-End-

  



End file.
